A tale of proteins and cells: Metabolic Solutions is trying to write next chapter with new diabetes, heart treatments

Al Jones / GazetteJerry R. Colca, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Metabolic Solutions Development Co., explains the drug discovery company's focus on the root causes of dysfunctional metabolism, which causes heart attacks and strokes and is behind erectile dysfunction, cognitive dysfunction and kidney disease. He believes he and company co-founder Rolf F. Kletzien have discovered compounds that can treat dysfunctional metabolism.

KALAMAZOO — Through the 1980s and ’90s, scientific researchers at The Upjohn Co. had expertise in developing small molecular
compounds and were forging ahead to find those that could be viable treatments for diabetes.

In September 2003, after the drug company had become Pharmacia Corp. and then became a part of Pfizer Inc., it got out of
the diabetes business, and that expertise, some of which had been at Upjohn since the 1970s, was scattered.

Laid off by the company, researchers became free agents.

“The compound that we were working on went on to be Actos — with Takeda (corporation) in Japan,” said scientific researcher
Jerry Colca.

Actos’ key ingredient, pioglitazone, is
one of a category of compounds called insulin sensitizers, which improve
the way insulin
works. But after years on the market, Actos has become associated
with weight gain and an increased risk of bladder cancer.
Another insulin sensitizer produced by Avandia has been withdrawn
from the market.

Colca said such products will be facing
competition from generic drug makers about a year from now. At the same
time, huge
growth is expected in the population suffering with Type 2
diabetes “with nothing to address the root cause of the disease.”

Colca, who worked for Pfizer through 2005, had hopes of bringing the team of researchers back together to refocus the research.

“We had some insight into how to treat diabetes,” he said. “If we could only put together the capital, we could put together
the old team that we had at Upjohn, even if they weren’t in the same place.”

He is, in some ways, doing that with Metabolic Solutions Development Co., a 6-year-old firm with headquarters in downtown
Kalamazoo and 12 workers at lab space in the Southwest Michigan Innovation Center.

Metabolic Solutions is employing some of that free-agent talent to develop new treatments for Type 2 diabetes.

View full sizeAl Jones / GazetteStephen C. Benoit, chief executive officer of Metabolic Solutions Development Co., says one of the company's compounds -- called MSDC-0602 -- may have the capacity to treat diabetes and other maladies such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy and Lou Gehrig's disease.

Colca
is co-founder, president and chief scientific officer of Metabolic
Solutions. Stephen C. Benoit, another seasoned life-sciences
professional, is its chiefexecutive officer.

Colca believes he and Metabolic Solutions
co-founder Rolf Kletzien, another former Upjohn/Pharmacia/Pfizer
scientist, have
a compound that treats the root causes of dysfunctional
metabolism, which causes heart attacks and strokes, as well as what
are called large vessel symptoms such as erectile dysfunction,
cognitive dysfunction and kidney disease. It focuses on activity
in the mitochondria, the power producer in cell anatomy. The focus
of Actos and other insulin sensitizers is on cell protein.

“Jerry and Rolf had an understanding of how these drugs work that no one else understood,” Benoit said during and interview
with him and Colca this week at the company’s administrative headquarters in the Haymarket Building in downtown Kalamazoo.
Other researchers went in another direction, focusing on interactions with cell proteins. But Benoit said, “Over time ...
the track record indicates that everyone else was not right.”

Their compound — called MSDC-0602 — may
have the capacity to treat diabetes and other maladies such as
Alzheimer’s disease,
Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy and Lou Gehrig’s Disease. And the
Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation announced Monday that
it is providing a grant of $773,000 to help the drug discovery
company conduct a Phase 2a trial of a drug candidate that Metabolic
Solutions has been working on longer — called MSDC-0160.

The potential payoff is a
multibillion-dollar product that is a new treatment for
neurodegenerative diseases (with MSDC-0160)
and/or one that can help prevent the onset of diabetes and some
other diseases (MSDC-0602). Sales of products in the latter
category reached about $20 billion three to four years ago, Colca
said.

“We’re talking about something that, if we’re right, will be one of the biggest pharmaceutical products in the world,” he
said.

The company has raised about $50 million thus far to develop the compounds and expects to need at least $300 million more
to complete the development.

“The next four or five months will be pretty important for the company,” Benoit said.

In about three weeks, the company expects
the clinical results from the Phase 2a testing on MSDC-0602. By the end
of the year,
it will decide if it will partner with a large pharmaceutical
company to continue development of one or both of the drug candidates.
And by early next year, it hopes to have raised another $40
million to $50 million in operating capital from investors.

“There is a really huge need and not an
adequate inventory of drugs to meet that growing need,” Benoit said,
referring to
treatment of Type 2 diabetes, “and I would argue a dearth of
scientific innovation that could really bring this new hope to
people.”

The men want to develop an “ecosystem” for scientific research in Kalamazoo.

“I would like to see us regrow the pharmaceutical world in a new way and for Kalamazoo to be the spearhead of that,” Colca
said. “I want to see sustainable contract research organizations (people with good ideas) ... and what we would create is
a company based on ideas. It’s really the strength of the idea that you need.”

Like car companies, large pharmaceutical
companies were structured in a way that they had everything and tried to
have smart
scientists in-house to generate great ideas and new products, the
men said. But Colca said great ideas come for all over and
require money and a knowledgeable base to support them.

You cannot simply hire all the smart people and get planned outcomes, he said. The marriage of that capital with great ideas
would seed such a system.

“If we’re a company with a $5 billion product and very little infrastructure, then there’s a lot of capital to spin off,”
Benoit said. “Think about it as an ecosystem (for scientific research). What’s missing ... is one really big success.”

Colca said it was very disappointing to
see the foundation of human pharmaceutical research dismantled here.
Metabolic Solutions
wants to have enough success to lay the foundation for others with
great life-science and technological ideas to come to the
Kalamazoo area and grow here.

“You have to have more Jerrys and Rolfs here, and the only way you can have more Jerrys and Rolfs is to have Jerry and Rolf
be successful,” Colca said.

“What’s been excited is to see the investors get excited about something that has legs and that has the potential to stick
around this town,” he said.

Al Jones can be reached at ajones@kalamazoogazette.com or 269-388-8556.